59 minutes

[Shabby Russian]

In that seemingly interminable wilderness between 93-94 - 00-01 the BRE was like a social club for me and Mrs P - punctuated by the odd bit of football, and the odd gifted player. We went down the Albion (and away) to see our friends before, during and after the game and even during that Buckley run could manage to laugh at how awful we were. Granted, we weren't blessed with the best players - but as well as most putting a shift in, we had players who genuinely loved playing for the club: Burgess, Raven, Donovan, Sneekes, Hughesy, Hunty and of course, Bob. The day I found out Shaun Murphy was on £2000 per week and seeking more was really the only time I got a little angry. Semper te fallant and all that.

Football has transitioned to showbiz over the last 20 years - and we're now stuck with massively overpaid C and D Listers from Love Island, Big Brother (Season 3) and El Dorado. I still manage a laugh up the back of the Brummie, but the anger within and around me when these overpaid wasters fail to put in the minimum effort is palpable. I am luckier than Rowley, insofar as P Major has a biting sense of sarcasm which gets us both through, and P Minor just loves the fact that there are so many boys there. However, what we do share is that if I stopped going they wouldn't really miss it one bit right now.

That's very sad, isn't it?

That's a genuinely nice nostalgic post.

I remember those times fondly too.

Perhaps the difference between then and now is in those days we didn't have the sense of entitlement we have today.

And in fairness that sense of entitlement probably comes from experience of either being in the premier league or being very involved in the promotion race to the premier league.

A period of adjustment to our expectations is where we are headed.

[MassDebater]

In that seemingly interminable wilderness between 93-94 - 00-01 the BRE was like a social club for me and Mrs P - punctuated by the odd bit of football, and the odd gifted player. We went down the Albion (and away) to see our friends before, during and after the game and even during that Buckley run could manage to laugh at how awful we were. Granted, we weren't blessed with the best players - but as well as most putting a shift in, we had players who genuinely loved playing for the club: Burgess, Raven, Donovan, Sneekes, Hughesy, Hunty and of course, Bob. The day I found out Shaun Murphy was on £2000 per week and seeking more was really the only time I got a little angry. Semper te fallant and all that.

Football has transitioned to showbiz over the last 20 years - and we're now stuck with massively overpaid C and D Listers from Love Island, Big Brother (Season 3) and El Dorado. I still manage a laugh up the back of the Brummie, but the anger within and around me when these overpaid wasters fail to put in the minimum effort is palpable. I am luckier than Rowley, insofar as P Major has a biting sense of sarcasm which gets us both through, and P Minor just loves the fact that there are so many boys there. However, what we do share is that if I stopped going they wouldn't really miss it one bit right now.

That's very sad, isn't it?

That's a genuinely nice nostalgic post.

I remember those times fondly too.

Perhaps the difference between then and now is in those days we didn't have the sense of entitlement we have today.

And in fairness that sense of entitlement probably comes from experience of either being in the premier league or being very involved in the promotion race to the premier league.

A period of adjustment to our expectations is where we are headed.

The other thing from back then was, information on the club was more limited. Usually something like Grorty Dick was needed to get even anything remotely pretending to be ITK. People went to the games, and each game was largely a separate entity, yes we paid attention to the bigger seasonal picture if things were getting exciting (up or down), but then you went home and maybe messaged / spoke to some mates or read the paper and maybe watched the highlights on the next day's news. These days sites like this exist and a bit like 24 hour news, it's a constant in the World, so maybe feels more important and much bigger than it really is?

Maybe?

[Protheroe]

It was seldom pretty nor enjoyable during the days of Buckley, Smith, Little et al. But fuck it seemed a little more honest and genuine than now.

Quite right. Me and you are about the same vintage.

Integrity finally left on the same bus as Roy, Dan & Jezza.

[Ossian]

If it's nostalgia for the game we remember and became attached to, then the older we are the more likely it is that the old adage of "those days are gone and they ain't coming back" is likely to be true. My formative years were spent watching players of the calibre of Jeff, Bomber, Bobby Hope... players who any other team in the league would have welcomed into their squad.

That can't be recreated. Rupert Murdoch didn't reinvent football 30 years ago: he came up with a bastard aberration, played in football stadia but designed from the outset to morph into something which would eat the game as many of us had known it. There's a Pathé News clip available on Youtube of the 1954 cup final (I don't go back that far, by the way, but my father and grandfather both went to the game); during the preamble the voice over refers to "the highlight of the year's soccer season" and "the clash between two giants of the north".

Misty watercolour memories of the way we were - gone, and they ain't coming back; although that period between 1993 and 2001 might just be recreated. Hopefully not the one from '86 to '93.

Nowt any of us can do: stick with it, or give it up. Those are the options and I wouldn't blame anybody who chose the latter.

[Hopalong]

Is it entitlement to ask players to at least try and not hide?

That's what's fucking us off.

Or maybe the last few coaches/managers we've had,  have on the whole been tactically deficient/inflexible and out thought by their opposite more often than not?   This squad should be doing far better but e.g. Saturday,  Stoke simply matched our shape, marked us tightly and we had no answer. 

The only teams we seem to do well against are those who play open, gung-ho attractive football. 

Any team that has a plan to frustrate us seem to succeed.  

From what I've largely seen in the 12 games Bruce has been in charge,  he's tactically clueless.  He's too comfortable (£8m payoff from Toon) overweight and sounds outdated  - just repeats the same old cliches "we're simply not good enough - about 9 times so far.  Why keep picking the same players then and using the same formation.  Maybe you and your coaching team are the problem? 

Don't get me wrong, some of these players need moving on but if people think players go out to do anything other than what they're told they're being naive.  So if the opposition sit back in a shape - it's a case of what do we do now?  I've never seen so many sideways/backwards passes as Saturday.  Yet again Bruce was out-foxed as he was at Blues the week before.  

It's adios for me.

[clem4england]

Totally feel the OP's pain and my son's found this season really tough as well (as we all have). However, just to balance it out, one of the Albion players has done something really kind for my son's birthday so they aren't all bad.

[Beachboysbaggie]

In that seemingly interminable wilderness between 93-94 - 00-01 the BRE was like a social club for me and Mrs P - punctuated by the odd bit of football, and the odd gifted player. We went down the Albion (and away) to see our friends before, during and after the game and even during that Buckley run could manage to laugh at how awful we were. Granted, we weren't blessed with the best players - but as well as most putting a shift in, we had players who genuinely loved playing for the club: Burgess, Raven, Donovan, Sneekes, Hughesy, Hunty and of course, Bob. The day I found out Shaun Murphy was on £2000 per week and seeking more was really the only time I got a little angry. Semper te fallant and all that.

Football has transitioned to showbiz over the last 20 years - and we're now stuck with massively overpaid C and D Listers from Love Island, Big Brother (Season 3) and El Dorado. I still manage a laugh up the back of the Brummie, but the anger within and around me when these overpaid wasters fail to put in the minimum effort is palpable. I am luckier than Rowley, insofar as P Major has a biting sense of sarcasm which gets us both through, and P Minor just loves the fact that there are so many boys there. However, what we do share is that if I stopped going they wouldn't really miss it one bit right now.

That's very sad, isn't it?

This is the biggest difference for me too. 
It was easier to forgive a poor player when their wages were closer to our own, we still sort of saw them as working class. Now that they are in another stratosphere, our patience runs out far quicker. We expect more, and rightly so.
I used to see Brian Robson in the barbers and Ally Robertson round the market, all you see of today's players is them lauding it up on Instagram or spouting shit on Twitter (not really as I have neither, but that's what I hear). The connection with players has gone forever at this level, it's now just a global market driven by money and it will be harder and harder to get kids supporting local clubs the way we did. 

I said all of this in a long, tedious (and most probably rambling) post not long after we dropped into the bottom half of the table, perhaps for the first time since Megson hauled us out of it. Justifying essentially how I saw all of this happening, and why I decided not to get an ST, and why the best course of action if you aren't happy with what is being served up is not to go. 

Naturally it elicited as much accusation of being a glory hunter as it drew sympathy/agreeance, but again I don't much care. I cut my teeth during the worst days of our history, and remember being there week-in, week-out through far worse times than this. 

But it was a totally different playing field then. But back to now, it's been as clear as daylight to me what has been wrong for ages, and it astounds me so many expect things to change for the better when the hierarchy and culture that we worked so hard to nurture during the JRP years is now conversely as clear and pristine as a Shane Nicholson piss sample. 

The club is a shadow of what it was 7/8 years ago. It is a reactionary, misled, mismanaged and aloof entity, whose aims are fanciful and its strategy as likely as a Zohore hat-trick. Moreover it's current playing assets are very few, and at the risk of repeating myself (and indeed others on the topic) I am afraid this all stems from the top. 

Whether that be signing great-looking Champ players from Portugal or wherever and then moving them on 6 months later, neither helping nor putting Slav out of his misery sooner (and giving the replacement any meaningful chance to salvage the squad), rewarding the wrong players with the biggest and fattest contracts, signing the wrong strikers for massive fees (and over insane terms than which I've had shorter mortgages), building the midfield around the wrong yet now seemingly indispensable pin-ups, ignoring the wrong ideal managerial candidate for reasons entirely detached from football, backing the wrong trendy project and then limiting him/steering him towards the bargain bin of transfer replacements, the goalkeeper situation... you just can't see all of this happening during the Peace era. 

Let's not be too rose-tinted. We did have problems over the course of that, and some very big ones too. There was the constant penny-pinching, the Lee Hughes situation, Koumas' exile (and eventual reintegration), Cuntis downing tools, Odemwingie being a dick, ending up with Luke 'Isaac Hunt' Moore, not offering Phillips the extra year, Bolivian Bednar, mysterious hand and foot pump injuries, off-field Mar Menor antics and I'm sure I've missed several more. But the club was - generally - stable and sufficiently well run to continue to function throughout it all, and by and large we dealt with or learned from all of it. 

Whereas now, we are simply lurching from one situation to another, at the same time the playing assets have dwindled to the extent that - regardless of debate over its calibre - we deserve to sit exactly where we now do.

The formula for the modern game has changed drastically. Perhaps it is because maybe we are all getting older, but it is true that there is a far greater divide and detachment from the fans which makes it all so much harder to swallow. It drives me nuts watching Callum Twatbollocks and Karlan Kunt whispering under their hands like wannabe gangstaz after the game. SJ has made many a bladder boil this season. All of our defenders are so inconsistent you wonder what the fuck is really going on. This club has become an easy street, and it is Lai and his management of it all that has countenanced this and allowed it to happen. 

My lad is 8 years old and should be begging me to take him. But he isn't, because he's a little ashamed given that his non-glory hunting mates are all crowing dingles. In short, there is nothing to be proud of right now. 

In fact, besides the unknown quantity of Dike, the only feather in our cap right now is the parachute money; and how that can be used in the summer. But given the uncertainty over Bruce, and the restrictions that will most likely neuter any replacement as they effectively did Val last year, I can't really see a lot changing. 

Perhaps it would be better to wait for most of these overpaid wankers to ultimately fuck off, and expect or even look forward to a period of wilderness coming up. It was seldom pretty nor enjoyable during the days of Buckley, Smith, Little et al. But fuck it seemed a little more honest and genuine than now.

It’s easy just to blame the leadership but we’ve had some big breaks go against us. Losing Ashworth to the FA, losing Evans for 3m (yes we could have sold him that January for 25m but we were fighting relegation and nearly succeeded), losing Ferguson for 900k, Johnstone happy to run down his contract. Those issues alone would have nearly 50m in the kitty if they’d gone the other way, but you can’t blame the club for the fact they didn’t. Add to that 17m wasted on Grady who looks like a 12-year old now, yet I’ll bet 99.9% of us thought it money well spent when her surged through Goodison to score 20 months ago. I don’t blame the club for that. Yes there have been plenty of crap decisions, don’t get me wrong, but we could have been in a much better place with a bit of luck on our side

[Squid]

In that seemingly interminable wilderness between 93-94 - 00-01 the BRE was like a social club for me and Mrs P - punctuated by the odd bit of football, and the odd gifted player. We went down the Albion (and away) to see our friends before, during and after the game and even during that Buckley run could manage to laugh at how awful we were. Granted, we weren't blessed with the best players - but as well as most putting a shift in, we had players who genuinely loved playing for the club: Burgess, Raven, Donovan, Sneekes, Hughesy, Hunty and of course, Bob. The day I found out Shaun Murphy was on £2000 per week and seeking more was really the only time I got a little angry. Semper te fallant and all that.

Football has transitioned to showbiz over the last 20 years - and we're now stuck with massively overpaid C and D Listers from Love Island, Big Brother (Season 3) and El Dorado. I still manage a laugh up the back of the Brummie, but the anger within and around me when these overpaid wasters fail to put in the minimum effort is palpable. I am luckier than Rowley, insofar as P Major has a biting sense of sarcasm which gets us both through, and P Minor just loves the fact that there are so many boys there. However, what we do share is that if I stopped going they wouldn't really miss it one bit right now.

That's very sad, isn't it?

This is the biggest difference for me too. 
It was easier to forgive a poor player when their wages were closer to our own, we still sort of saw them as working class. Now that they are in another stratosphere, our patience runs out far quicker. We expect more, and rightly so.
I used to see Brian Robson in the barbers and Ally Robertson round the market, all you see of today's players is them lauding it up on Instagram or spouting shit on Twitter (not really as I have neither, but that's what I hear). The connection with players has gone forever at this level, it's now just a global market driven by money and it will be harder and harder to get kids supporting local clubs the way we did. 

I said all of this in a long, tedious (and most probably rambling) post not long after we dropped into the bottom half of the table, perhaps for the first time since Megson hauled us out of it. Justifying essentially how I saw all of this happening, and why I decided not to get an ST, and why the best course of action if you aren't happy with what is being served up is not to go. 

Naturally it elicited as much accusation of being a glory hunter as it drew sympathy/agreeance, but again I don't much care. I cut my teeth during the worst days of our history, and remember being there week-in, week-out through far worse times than this. 

But it was a totally different playing field then. But back to now, it's been as clear as daylight to me what has been wrong for ages, and it astounds me so many expect things to change for the better when the hierarchy and culture that we worked so hard to nurture during the JRP years is now conversely as clear and pristine as a Shane Nicholson piss sample. 

The club is a shadow of what it was 7/8 years ago. It is a reactionary, misled, mismanaged and aloof entity, whose aims are fanciful and its strategy as likely as a Zohore hat-trick. Moreover it's current playing assets are very few, and at the risk of repeating myself (and indeed others on the topic) I am afraid this all stems from the top. 

Whether that be signing great-looking Champ players from Portugal or wherever and then moving them on 6 months later, neither helping nor putting Slav out of his misery sooner (and giving the replacement any meaningful chance to salvage the squad), rewarding the wrong players with the biggest and fattest contracts, signing the wrong strikers for massive fees (and over insane terms than which I've had shorter mortgages), building the midfield around the wrong yet now seemingly indispensable pin-ups, ignoring the wrong ideal managerial candidate for reasons entirely detached from football, backing the wrong trendy project and then limiting him/steering him towards the bargain bin of transfer replacements, the goalkeeper situation... you just can't see all of this happening during the Peace era. 

Let's not be too rose-tinted. We did have problems over the course of that, and some very big ones too. There was the constant penny-pinching, the Lee Hughes situation, Koumas' exile (and eventual reintegration), Cuntis downing tools, Odemwingie being a dick, ending up with Luke 'Isaac Hunt' Moore, not offering Phillips the extra year, Bolivian Bednar, mysterious hand and foot pump injuries, off-field Mar Menor antics and I'm sure I've missed several more. But the club was - generally - stable and sufficiently well run to continue to function throughout it all, and by and large we dealt with or learned from all of it. 

Whereas now, we are simply lurching from one situation to another, at the same time the playing assets have dwindled to the extent that - regardless of debate over its calibre - we deserve to sit exactly where we now do.

The formula for the modern game has changed drastically. Perhaps it is because maybe we are all getting older, but it is true that there is a far greater divide and detachment from the fans which makes it all so much harder to swallow. It drives me nuts watching Callum Twatbollocks and Karlan Kunt whispering under their hands like wannabe gangstaz after the game. SJ has made many a bladder boil this season. All of our defenders are so inconsistent you wonder what the fuck is really going on. This club has become an easy street, and it is Lai and his management of it all that has countenanced this and allowed it to happen. 

My lad is 8 years old and should be begging me to take him. But he isn't, because he's a little ashamed given that his non-glory hunting mates are all crowing dingles. In short, there is nothing to be proud of right now. 

In fact, besides the unknown quantity of Dike, the only feather in our cap right now is the parachute money; and how that can be used in the summer. But given the uncertainty over Bruce, and the restrictions that will most likely neuter any replacement as they effectively did Val last year, I can't really see a lot changing. 

Perhaps it would be better to wait for most of these overpaid wankers to ultimately fuck off, and expect or even look forward to a period of wilderness coming up. It was seldom pretty nor enjoyable during the days of Buckley, Smith, Little et al. But fuck it seemed a little more honest and genuine than now.

It’s easy just to blame the leadership but we’ve had some big breaks go against us. Losing Ashworth to the FA, losing Evans for 3m (yes we could have sold him that January for 25m but we were fighting relegation and nearly succeeded), losing Ferguson for 900k, Johnstone happy to run down his contract. Those issues alone would have nearly 50m in the kitty if they’d gone the other way, but you can’t blame the club for the fact they didn’t. Add to that 17m wasted on Grady who looks like a 12-year old now, yet I’ll bet 99.9% of us thought it money well spent when her surged through Goodison to score 20 months ago. I don’t blame the club for that. Yes there have been plenty of crap decisions, don’t get me wrong, but we could have been in a much better place with a bit of luck on our side

We have had some awful luck. You've not even mentioned Graham Scott there. And our big money striker getting injured within minutes of being on the pitch.

[HawkingsHalfpint]

We have had some awful luck, of course we have; and it is easy to forget that.

But to more than a large extent you make your own. Certainly you can prepare better to mitigate the kind of fortune we've endured. It's a competitive arena in which we find ourselves, and I'm afraid that the table doesn't lie in illustrating just how many teams are doing it better than we are at present.

We aren't the only side in the league to suffer setbacks, and never were.